


Red Cog Whirring

by The Blue Escapist (TheBlueEscapist)



Category: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, Retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:22:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBlueEscapist/pseuds/The%20Blue%20Escapist
Summary: Meeting Thaniel for the first time is everything Mori expected, and everything he didn't.
Relationships: Keita Mori/Thaniel Steepleton
Comments: 16
Kudos: 78
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Red Cog Whirring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [codswallop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/codswallop/gifts).



What Mori hoped Thaniel would understand one day—if he did everything perfectly, if Thaniel stayed—was that stopping the bombing had never been an option.

It sat heavily on his chest sometimes, on the good days when Thaniel's choices led him closer to Mori instead of farther, that his own good fortune would be bought with the deaths of so many innocents, but by the time he'd reached London all the Clan na Gael members responsible had already set everything in motion. 

What Mori knew nobody but Thaniel might ever understand, was that he could pull a thread only so far before it snapped. 

He had experimented in his youth, once he had understood how unique his own perception of time was, and it had taken him one lesson too many to comprehend the dangers of playing God. Now that he was in his forties, Mori was quite good at discerning when a push in a certain direction became outright manipulation, and also when a weave was too tight to be interfered with. Not crossing the first line was a matter of honour, something life had never managed to beat out of him; but knowing when not to meddle was simply the result of a lifetime of experimentation. 

This was why Mori could, in good conscience, say that if he could have prevented the Scotland Yard bombing he would have, even had it costed him his Thaniel.

Yet, when Thaniel showed up on his doorstep several months later, stiff from soot and shock, Mori couldn't help an unbidden twinge of guilt, that he might have spared Thaniel such an experience.

It couldn't last: even having known his entire life that Thaniel might happen, nothing had prepared Mori for handling the sheer amount of possibilities Thaniel generated with his every word and action. 

For such a proper-looking gentleman, his Thaniel was an extraordinary agent of chaos. 

Not having understood something this fundamental about the man he'd worked his whole life to meet, upset Mori enough that he was curt to the brink of rudeness when Thaniel asked him if he spoke English.

He covered his blunder by offering Thaniel the tea it had taken him weeks to choose, and was disappointed to notice Thaniel sip it distractedly. That was when he realised that Thaniel was bleeding from his arm, and his mind came to an abrupt halt. How could this have happened? Had he not timed the watch correctly? Thaniel was never supposed to come to any harm, or had Mori simply forgotten the times he hadn't?

He expressed his concern, eager to get Thaniel on a chair before he fainted, but Thaniel floored him again by ignoring his offer entirely and bringing up his watch. Did Mori remember who he had sold it to?

Mori saw Thaniel’s jaw tighten. Thaniel was evidently holding himself together with the need to make sense of what had happened and exorcise it, yet Mori had to deny him this truth, lest Thaniel think him a madman or worse.

He steeled himself by taking the watch off of Thaniel, which had the side advantage of making it harder for Thaniel to leave, then he looked straight into Thaniel’s eyes and lied to his face: “I didn’t sell it. I thought it had been stolen.”

It was like witnessing a pillow explode, each feather a mind of its own, and Mori shook with the effort of keeping track and sifting through all of them. He floundered through Thaniel's questions, babbling random unrelated facts in an effort to keep his attention, all his court teachings in eloquence and wit failing him at this worst possible moment. 

It was all extremely undignified. The more frantically Mori searched for logical excuses, the more he couldn't seem to be able to provide them. Thaniel's expression went from anger to exasperation to sheer frustration, and any minute now he was going to walk through that door and never come back, or come back an enemy...

And then Thaniel didn't. Thaniel exhaled, his shoulders slumping, and his gaze was soft when he said: "You don't know a thing about it, do you?"

And Mori must have forgotten about Thaniel's compassion, or maybe he was simply unused to having that feeling directed towards himself. It unearthed the covetousness he fought so hard to reign in, and it was frighteningly easy to lie to Thaniel again, and deny any knowledge of the events whatsoever.

He was punished for it immediately, when Thaniel reached the conclusion he was wasting his time and tried to leave, and it bled into his tone when he denied Thaniel, and herded him into the kitchen instead.

Thaniel didn't seem to mind as he docilely sat down into one of the chairs. The fight had gone out of him, leaving in its place only exhaustion. He was still sharp enough to notice the scones and tea, but this time Mori chose to ignore his question. There was only one honest answer, and he wasn't about to tell Thaniel it was him he'd been waiting for.

Having field experience in dressing wounds, it was hard for Mori to give Thaniel his privacy while he saw to himself, but Thaniel did look like he needed a moment alone. The shirt he'd already procured months ago, on the off chance that this would happen, but he couldn't help cursing when he went back to the kitchen and saw the shard that had been in Thaniel's arm. Had it ended up lodged into Thaniel's throat instead... He just couldn't believe how he hadn't seen how close he'd come to losing Thaniel entirely.

He must have made some kind of noise, because Thaniel looked up at him and said, gently: "It's better than it looks." It was a white lie, of course, but the care it showed made Mori's heart twinge again.

He turned his back to Thaniel, both to let him put the shirt on and to hide his own distress, and busied himself with laying the tray. When he caught Thaniel staring, he couldn't help smiling at him.

It triggered a fresh wave of futures. Mori blinked once, twice at them all, before it struck him that, as responsive as Thaniel actually was to him, he didn't seem to like it. 

Mori didn't really know what to do with this piece of information. He had always focused on how to keep Thaniel in his bed indefinitely; that Thaniel might have issues on the matter that would need circumventing, had simply not occurred to Mori.

He suggested some options that would allow Thaniel to put between them the space he seemed to crave; if he worded them in such a way as to imply their foolishness, well. It was good to see his own training kick in again at last.

Thaniel wavered, then capitulated on staying the night in such an ungracious manner that Thaniel himself looked appalled. 

"Please don't be mortified," Mori said. "It isn't your fault." He couldn't bear even a minute more of Thaniel looking so uncomfortable. He decided to follow Thaniel's lead and talk about his own work for once, but that was when Katsu showed up.

Mori would treasure for many years to come the memory of how speechless Thaniel went. Mori pretended to be offended by his reaction, then smoothly framed Katsu for the presumed impossibility to let his spare room.

Thaniel accepted the explanation, but in one of his many non sequiturs, Thaniel offered his own name and asked for Mori's.

"It's Keita," Mori said eventually and, as it left his lips, Mori knew that one day Thaniel might use it willingly. 

A smile stole over Mori's face.


End file.
